Quality & Safety Inspection Services Category Procurement Intelligence Report

The market for Technical Services and its sub-segments such as Quality & Safety Inspection Services are at an interesting intersection. New locations and vendors are emerging as cost effective suppliers of Quality & Safety Inspection Services, offering an opportunity to widen the supplier base and gain further negotiation leverage with incumbent suppliers.

Suppliers are increasingly offering a 'bundle' of services which is marketed as a cost saving option. The bundled offering often includes services that are not required by the buyer or are charged at a much higher rate than an A la carte option with another supplier.

Suppliers are introducing self-service tools such as virtual agents in their customer service ecosystem to reduce the time and costs incurred by customers to resolve an issue.

Trends like these and many others discussed in this report are necessitating a relook at the way Quality & Safety Inspection Services is procured and the procurement cost saving opportunities that exist.

Quality & Safety Inspection Services procurement best practices are moving towards a level of sophistication which is typically seen in traditional procurement categories. Category managers now have an attractive opportunity to adapt the best practices seen within this category as well as those being leveraged in other non-related categories. This report summarizes the best practices picked from across multiple categories that could work well for category managers involved with Quality & Safety Inspection Services procurement strategy.

For example, Category managers must ensure that they have clearly identified and listed down potential negotiation levers to maximize the value of their category spend before entering into contract-related discussions with service providers. Common negotiation levers to maximize value include deadlines, terms related to payments, (including fees, expenses, and payment timelines) and assistance required from the buyer's organization.

Buyers should set a baseline against which the performance of suppliers can be benchmarked along with setting measurable/quantifiable KPIs. Defined KPIs provides suppliers with clarity on the scope. Besides setting standards for operations, pricing, and performance, KPIs must provide tangible goals in terms of the quality of solutions.

Cost saving opportunities may reduce exponentially in relation to the time left for current contract to expire or required timeline to start the engagement. Therefore sufficient interval should exist between initation of new procurement and expected start date of the new contract for Quality & Safety Inspection Services.

Quality & Safety Inspection Services procurement managers also need to proactively identify and mitigate potential risks that can arise in the supply chain or contracts for Quality & Safety Inspection Services procurement. Some examples include: